Welcome to our table!
We’re a husband and wife team that loves to cook and entertain together. In part it’s because both of us are connectors — we love nothing more than bringing people together, especially over a great home cooked meal! When we entertain we don’t shy away from taking on ambitious menus to impress and delight our friends. “Really, are we going to make a five course meal that calls for cheese and bread made from scratch???? Why not?” In the process we often take on more than we can chew (literally and figuratively). In the process we’ve learned a lot about meal planning, a skill that we’ve honed thanks to a few disasters that we don’t need to go into right now. . . more later, we promise.
The powerful act of cooking!
We also think bringing people together around food achieves much larger things. In an age where differences are being amplified, we’d rather focus on our similarities. We know this to be true — when we land in a new place we seek out local specialities. Why? It’s through these unique specialties that we begin to understand the new locale and start gaining an appreciation of what makes the place and people unique. Whether it’s gumbo in New Orleans, mole in Mexico, or tagine in Morocco, our eyes, hearts and minds begin opening through the simple act of eating and so we extend that experience to our very own table.
We’ve created this corner of the Web as a place of connection and want to invite you to our table — an extended circle of friends and enthusiastic eaters. Through our step-by-step menus, we aim to inspire and help you to pull together great meals and celebrate life one meal at a time.
Cooking real food for yourself, your friends and family is a huge act of love. It’s also one of the most powerful ways you can protect your health and the health of our planet. The food industry propogates the myth that cooking is “inconvenient,” and that we should leave the cooking to them. That hasn’t worked out so well for our country’s health. Cooking is the answer and we hope that our recipes inspire you to make cooking a part of your life.
Circle of Eaters?
And this gets us to our name — Circle of Eaters. First have you tried to find a name that isn’t taken – yeah, totally crazy? But it turns out this name is perfect for us on many levels, as you’ll learn over time. What we can tell you now is that it’s a mash-up of two institutions connected to Julia Child — the first was the club of food enthusiasts that Julia joined when she moved to Paris called Le Cercle des Gourmettes (Circle of the Gourmets) and the school she started L’Ecole des 3 Gourmandes – which she translated as the School of the 3 Happy Eaters, and voila, we had a name!
We’ll be featuring seasonal and themed menus, as well as regionally and internationally inspired dinner parties. No dinner party is complete without creating a great atmosphere, so we’ll give you ideas on how to dress your table and yourself! In the vast majority of cases the meals you see featured on our blog are those we made to share so be ready for our friends and families to make cameos. We think you’ll love them!
Civility zone
Our table is a troll-free zone. Nothing ruins a good meal than a mean crank, so know that negative and hurtful comments will not be posted. Constructive feedback is always welcome, however, so if there’s anything we can improve please let us know.